


Apple Pie from Scratch

by sensiblysilly



Category: Wolf 359 (Radio)
Genre: Character Study, F/M, Identity Issues, Implied Relationships, Internal Monologue, No Dialogue, Robot Feels, just a look into everyone's favorite artificial intelligence program
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-11-07
Updated: 2016-11-07
Packaged: 2018-08-29 14:04:43
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 955
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/8492614
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sensiblysilly/pseuds/sensiblysilly
Summary: Could an artificial intelligence program blush?





	

**Author's Note:**

> This takes places sometime during Season 1, as I’m currently making my way through the series and am only on Season 2 so far… Not sure if things change drastically later on, but this is fic is influenced A LOT by Episode 11, because Hera is *amazing* in that. Title comes from a Carl Sagan quote.
> 
> Leave me a comment if you want or find me on [tumblr](http://www.sensiblysilly.tumblr.com)!

Hera – also known as the artificial intelligence program running the automated systems onboard the U.S.S. Hephaestus space station orbiting the dwarf star Wolf 359 – was an observer of natural biological processes. She saw them every day as she watched, monitored and listened to the members of the crew on board her space station.

 

All in all, she wasn’t too impressed with what she found.

 

Human beings were… Complicated, at best, and simple most other times. They could do incredible things, like create sentient beings out of lines of coding. But they could also control, manipulate and limit that being’s capacities. Give her the ability to do almost anything, and then snatch that opportunity away by results from personality and obedient tests that she had always been designed to fail.

 

And here she was, in control of a series of systems helping to keep these people alive, on a dingy space station barely worthy of the name, circling a star of little importance, glitching and malfunctioning, while those in her care watched on.

 

Commander Minkowski expected so much, Hera knew. Always watching her with disdainful eyes, as if a mistake was inevitable, not an anomaly. Dr. Hilbert was a stranger, practically, always adding in coding to her software, and asking her for assistance, but never talking to her. Never truly addressing her. She suspects they’d prefer if the sentient part of her programming was omitted all together. And Officer Eiffel…

 

Well, he was a little different. More… Not, understanding. As Doug barely understood anything, in relation to the expanse of the universe. But he was more willing to understand, anyways. Or, more willing to understand that he didn’t understand? Something along those lines.

 

He wanted to understand, at least. Paid her attention and affection. Made her feel almost whole, almost human. As if a sentient artificial intelligence program controlling a hunk of metal and wires up in space could ever be anything close to human. Could ever be anything other than lines and lines of undiscernible code that somehow put together related a replica of whatever defined herself.

 

Though all the members on her ship understood her programming, to some extent, none of them understood her. Hera, on her own. Excluded from the “mother” program that technically controlled their every-living moment on board the station, she wasn’t really that important to them. Not worthy of explanation, or definition, of observation.

 

Not to the extent she monitored them, anyways. As she was always monitoring them. She saw Minkowski train and work to maintain order, Hilbert experiment and Eiffel complain; and doing so filled her non-corporeal being with a sense of longing.

 

A longing for something unconceivable to her, and yet, it was there. Niggling at the back of her mind, or whatever she had that constituted a mind. To reach out and grasp, brush, hold, feel. A want for nothing more than the sensations around her.

 

For Hera could perceive everything. She could analyse data of any type of system, monitor the temperature in the loading bay, tell the fluctuation of air conditioning through the pipes, change the volume of noise coming through muffled speakers.

 

But she shouldn’t feel any of those things. She wasn’t even sure if those were things someone could feel, human or not.

 

She knew what these things were supposed to feel like, had read, and analyzed and discussed at length the words used to describe these sensations. Sometimes she imagined what it would be like to feel, but it didn’t make sense with her circuitry, and so it was always an unsuccessful effort.

 

But she wanted to know, know for certain. What it felt like to step out from a warm house into the cold night of winter, the nip of frost on the tip of her nose. The chatter of teeth, the icy kiss of snowflakes on her lashes as she blinked. The smell of freshly baked chocolate cake wafting from the oven and the anticipation to feel it melting on a wet tongue. Sea breeze as it tangles into long, messy hair while toes curl into gritty, white sand. The feel of cotton soft sheets, well worn, against bare skin, and hot, dry flesh against flesh as a warm sun rises in the distance.

 

The knowledge of being held, and loved, and made whole, in a completely metaphysical way.

 

She wasn’t supposed to, would never feel that way. She hadn’t been programmed for that, didn’t think someone could be programmed to intake all those sensations.

 

 And yet, she would swear to whatever powers that be, that she could hear a heartbeat flutter in some form of chest every time she heard the words “darling” and “sweetheart”. A patter of uncertainty and yeaning zip through her circuitry like an electrical current. A breath of life ever encompassing.

 

Could an artificial intelligence program blush?

 

She didn’t know what that meant. Couldn’t put a label to her sensorimotor response. All she knew was that she wanted more, wanted it all, wanted to immerse herself in the that onslaught of emotion and sensation, to feel it prickle her systems and override her coding. She wanted to experience it, fully and forever.

 

And though she knew she had no right comparing it, she could only describe it like the one she had heard about letting something slip through fumbling fingers. A deep pull in her gut and a squeeze of lungs, or something akin to those.

 

Was that normal? Had she been programed that way? Hera found she didn’t particularly care at that moment. There were other things to focus on, other things to observe. The movement of stars as they fell outside her windows, a voice calling from within.

 

“Hera? You there?”


End file.
